Category Archives: House

The former owner of my house planted some gorgeous varieties of roses. Through the years I have lived here, I have slowly gathered practice and knowledge about how to keep the roses healthy and beautiful. I don’t have much trouble with the hybrid tea roses–you can cut them almost to the ground and the next year they reach to the… Read more »

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We live in a disposable society. Products are designed to last for the duration of their warranty period and to break soon after. Those product designs include non-standard, factory-installed parts that render the average person powerless in the face of repair. My grandpa would be disappointed. He was a radio operator during WWII and could fix anything. Brought up during… Read more »

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When I started this blog in 2014, I mostly intended for it to be a blog about working on my new-to-me old house, plus a little about family. The blog immediately went in the direction of Down syndrome. Mostly I try to write when something moves me. Now that I have succeeded in getting out many of my Down syndrome-related… Read more »

The stairs in our house are steep. So steep that when Kyle first learned to walk, his occupational therapist told us that she didn’t know a way to teach him to walk down them. Physically, it was nearly impossible to either walk forwards or crawl backwards considering the length of his legs. So for over a year, we carried Kyle… Read more »

A few weeks ago while I was mowing the lawn, I saw my next-door neighbor walk in my direction wearing a big backpack-style tank sprayer. Weeds are a silent point of contention between us. I have them, he doesn’t. He believes in hiring a lawn service to spray his weeks, and I don’t. Lucky for me, because of “landscape registry,”… Read more »

Raise your hand if you have applied weed & feed, roundup, broadleaf herbicide, or any other chemical weed killer to your lawn this year. Was it worth your time? Worth your money? Worth the risks to living things and our environment? I know what you’re thinking: not another soapbox preacher! I am so tired of people telling me what to… Read more »